Nick

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

The Atlantic’s new cover story by @rosehorowitch is absolutely definitive on the end of the age of reading in America—and the emergence of a new post-literate age in modern life

Some core facts and anecdotes:

1. Reading is shrinking. The share of Americans who read for pleasure declined by 43 percent between 2004 and 2023. While Americans might see more words than ever—between all those texts, posts, emails, and captions—less than half of Americans read books, anymore. The average sentence in NYT bestsellers are one-third shorter than a century ago.

2. Americans can swallow words and sentences, but they’re losing the ability to think deeply about writing that’s longer than an Instagram post. Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.

3. It’s worse for the young. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have slid for the past decade. From 1984 to 2025, the percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 to 29 percent.

4. “Every year older a child gets, the less they like to read”: Most high-schoolers consider reading for pleasure an alien practice. Margaret Rennix, Harvard’s assistant director for humanities and social-sciences support, says some students view reading as an unnecessarily burdensome way of acquiring knowledge. “By asking them to read,” she said, it's as if “professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through this more difficult medium.”

https://t.co/kk8qktY6fd

[Bia @BeatrizGietner]

this is an insane stat

[Cyrus Smith @CoolCyWrites]

Norway made youth sports free 40 years ago and just made the quarters for the first time ever. Probably not a coincidence.

[blauereiter @blauereiter]

LOOK CLOSER

[Gekko @_Gekkostate_]

What sells the action in Bay films is he doesn't depict the military as cannon fodder. A lot of sci-fi action blockbusters treat normal soldiers disposably. They're effortlessly killed off to show how weak they are compared to whatever advanced threat they are facing. But having-

[Pringus McDingus @Armand_Gman]

listen
i love transformers
i love dinosaurs
i love great vfx
this is one of the most dogshit movies i've ever seen in my entire life

[gal debored @ckayerawlings]

I cannot stress enough how much this audio means to me.

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

Kelsey's thread about the seething contempt for women is worth reading, but I want to emphasize this point.

It's not lame to care. You should care desperately about things, you should be passionate, you should give a shit. There's been an epidemic of detached irony over the last several decades. Society spent years telling us that people who care are nerds, the cool kids are the ones who are above it all. "haha you're so mad" as though that's a sign of weakness.

To hell with that. Develop attachments and care about things and do it with sincerity in your heart. You'll be a better and more complete human if you do.

[Beer Enjoyer @YungGiamatti]

Added to the vernacular

[Big Jay Shooke @JShooke]

In my day, a female centered superhero movie could bomb without it sparking a whole gender war. We’d just give Halle Berry a Razzie and move on with our lives

[Rob Freund @RobertFreundLaw]

After 8 years of this case working its way through the courts, I am made whole.

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

The Google Docs AI assistant bug covering the text of what am I writing is such an obvious violation of both the Google ethos and every known UI principle that it, on its own, makes me think the AI bubble is about to pop.

[Matt @stealth_riot]

A trans flag that transitions we’ve been brutually outwoked by the da vinki twins

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

When you hit a wall in math, coding, or any hard skill, do not immediately conclude that you lack talent. Most walls are just prerequisite debt finally coming due. Go back, fill the gaps, make the basics automatic, and the wall often turns into a staircase.

[Orwell Day @OrwellDay]

Milford Michigan City Council votes UNANIMOUSLY to CANCEL one contract for 5 cameras. Vote on second contract for 10 more cameras up for renewal later this year (expected vote in August).

A city council members stated:

'Flock Safety told the city they would delete data after 30 days. They walked that back and now claim a perpetual license to citizen data (even after the contract cancellation).'

'Flock also removed a line from their terms and conditions that stated 'they do not own and cannot sell citizen information'. That line is now gone.'

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Decisions about how to use AI in your organization are increasingly organizational design and strategy decisions, not IT choices: How do you integrate agents into your firm? What intelligence will you outsource? What are the boundaries of the firm? What is the role of people?

[Ramit Sethi @ramit]

Abigail Disney famously shared what happened to her dad when he began flying private:

"So all of the sudden, we went from being comfortable, upper-middle-class people to suddenly my dad had a private jet. That's when I feel that my dad really lost his way in life..."

"If I were queen of the world, I would pass a law against private jets, because they enable you to get around a certain reality. You don't have to go through an airport terminal, you don't have to interact, you don't have to be patient, you don't have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we're human"

[Paarug Sethi @paarugsethi]

all timer

[Ad Professor @The_AdProfessor]

Depression awareness.

One of the best ads of all time.

[rat king 🐀 @MikeIsaac]

insane lineup